


The Babadook

by CatieBrie



Category: Sherlock (TV), The Babadook (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Movie Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Demonic Possession, Grief, Halloweenlock 2015, Horror, I think it's a happy ending at least, Ignores Season Three, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Violence, brief mary/john dynamics, halloweenlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-28 23:25:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5109380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatieBrie/pseuds/CatieBrie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“A children’s book,” John mutters as he flips it open.  The pages are scrawled with beautiful charcoal lines and thick black ink.  The cover, bright red, edges the open pages and something tugs at the back of John’s brain.  It’s a familiar feeling, black and tarrish and thick in his thoughts.  He shakes it off and picks the book up off his bed, turning so that he can sit on the edge and spread the book out across his knees.</p><p>If it’s in a word or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook.</p><p>He turns the page, ignoring the pressure building beneath his chest. There’s a closet on one page; paper doors meant to be opened by the reader flutter as John reads the text on the other page.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Babadook

**Author's Note:**

> The Babadook is probably one of my all time favorite horror movies and what better way to celebrate Halloween than a horror movie/Sherlock fusion?? 
> 
> Enjoy!

John stands on the rooftop of Bart’s.  The noises around him distort and blur, quiet distractions filtering from one ear to the other.  Wind blows cold, billows his coat like wings out around him and tempts his feet just that much closer to the edge.

He shifts back again, smells copper and turns.  Blood swirls in glistening curlicues, eddying dark and black and fathomless beneath the surface. Bits of gore float and bob out of view like fallen leaves in a river, trapped by the current’s fingers.  It all rises, slipping over the edge of the roof, waterfalling between his feet and sweeping him forward into empty air.

Asphalt rushes to meet him and he crashes into it face first, pain radiating out from his nose to the tips of his fingers.

_“John!”_

John’s eyes open on the wooden floorboards of his flat. He turns on his side with a groan, sheets tangling with his legs. Mary peeks at him from the edge of the bed, eyes wide with concern and lips twitching against amusement.  “Oh, you’re _bleeding_.”

John touches his face with the hand not supporting him and it comes away red.  “A dream.”

“I think you’ve broken your nose.”  John is relieved to see the twitch of her lips gone.  She rolls off of the bed and lands gently beside him, holding a corner of sheet in her hand.  “Was it a nightmare?”

John winces when she presses the cloth to his nose.  “Yes.”

“You’re usually so loud.”  

He frowns at her and she sets her chin in response.  “Don’t look at me like that, I only meant the noise lets me know not to wake you.”

John deflates.  “Sorry.”

She sits up on her knees and guides his hand to hold the sheet to his nose; the silk of her nightgown whispers across her skin as she kisses his forehead and then sits back on her heels to survey him.  “I don’t think it’s broken, but you’ll have a bit of swelling.”

“I can deal.”

She smiles at him and then stands.  “Well, it’s nearly waking time anyway.  I’ll start coffee and grab you some ice.”

She walks away leaving John with a sheet bloodied and clutched in his hand, fighting the ever-growing discontented despair spreading like a poison through every thought.

—

He’s had the ring for ages and he should have known that it is destined to weigh down his pocket linings for an eternity.  The plush finish of its box prickles his fingers, tiny jabs as he rubs the wrong way, smooth velvet as he goes the other.  He’s sure by the time the evening ends he’ll have rubbed it raw and bald.

Mary watches him, eyes wide and knowing as she sips at her wine.

“Mary.” John looks up at her and then away almost immediately as he notices a familiar ghost dart behind her.

He can’t, he’s not ready.

“Never mind.”

She screws her mouth up into a disappointed smile but doesn’t push it.

“Okay, John.”

—

“This is my note.”

John holds the phone close to his ear and refuses to hear the words.  Beneath him asphalt has started to crawl up his legs, liquid tendrils sucking him down.  The sky looks red as he drowns but still he grips the phone.  He’s trying to say the words he’s been too scared to say before but he’s choking on them and then he’s chin deep and out of time.

“Sherlock, don’t, _please_ I lo-” Asphalt floods his mouth, tasting like tar as it fills his throat and expands his lungs, trapping the words forever.

John wakes and he knows Mary watches him in the dark.

“You were dreaming.”

He says nothing, trying to feign sleep.

“About Sherlock.”

John feels his face heat and guilt gnaw at his ribs.

“You never talk about him anymore.”

John doesn’t reply and there’s a long enough silence that he’s drifting off again.

“You still love him.”  He thinks he hears as he falls back to darkness once more.

—

John sees Sherlock the next day.

On a whimsy he trails after an all-too-familiar ghost instead of ploughing forward to work.  It takes him to a park today, but something’s different.  It’s too withered and crumpled and sharp to be a figment.  Its hair, _his_ hair, drapes closer to his neckline, his shoulders curl in against some unknown threat and he moves with a skittish grace that slides between John’s ribs like a blade to tear at his heart.

“Sherlock.”  Verdigris eyes skip over his face, John catches something haunted before they trail away.

“John.”  Sherlock’s voice remains the same and suddenly John is angry.  

“You—” John stalks forward, fingers raised in crooked lines, recoiling from and reaching toward the specter before him in equal measure.  “You—”

“I see you are as eloquent as ever.”  

John must have imagined weakness in Sherlock because now he faces John, collected and amused.

John snarls wordlessly and lunges at him but he doesn’t connect; his feet skitter across the path as his weight drops him through empty space. He's going insane, that has to be it, he's attacking thin air and John almost laughs but then a hand grabs his coat keeping him from stumbling and halts his descent; he uses the counterweight and his momentum to swing around and land a blow, fist connecting solidly with Sherlock’s ribcage.

 _realwholesolidreal_ his brain spouts as he swings out his hand, bones twinging enough to suggest a fracture.  Sherlock wheezes, gasps in a breath and hurriedly steps back, putting enough space between him and John to easily see another blow coming.  That’s for the best; John wants to wrap his fingers around that thin neck and feel the pulse there and he’s not sure he wouldn’t keep squeezing until he felt it stop for real.

Sherlock watches him with something dark flickering behind his eyes. John squints and the darkness is gone, eyes now bright and wary.  “I probably deserved that.”

“Probably deserved—” John scoffs, disbelieving at the audacity. He tries, he really tries but the anger eats into each thought and if he says the things he wants to say he might destroy the illusion that Sherlock is really, truly here.  So he takes a deep breath, back straightening on the exhale. “You know what, no. Nope. I’m late for work, I can’t do this.”

And John leaves, nearly convinced he’s hallucinated the whole exchange by the time he’s settled into his office.

—

John sits at his temporary workspace, sifting through paperwork aimlessly. It’s become a right mess, patients mixed with journals and hospital printouts but it gives his hands something to do.  At the end of the day it will give him a last task to occupy his brain, sorting the pile back out.  Otherwise his mind will short-circuit and funnel down to;

_Sherlockalivebastardneverdiedgrieffornothingsohappy_

Spun on a loop, never ending among such heated rage and roaring relief and ill-spent grief. His fingers clench and accidentally tear a memo down its corner.  He sighs, and grabs for his coffee, nearly spilling it as his hand tremors.

Beside him his phone refuses to buzz.

— 

“John, let’s get dinner.”  Mary stands at his door, smiling warily.  

“Not tonight.  Why don’t you go out with Janine?”  John doesn't look up at her, glares at his phone, waiting for it to light up with something, anything to confirm his park illusion.

“Will you come over later, at least?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What is it?”

His phone vibrates before he can answer; an unfamiliar number brightens the screen.

_Come back to 221B -SH_

His heart contracts painfully and he types out a response without thinking.  

_No_

“He’s back.”  John looks up and Mary’s face has darkened, grief and irritation warring for space before it smoothes out into ambivalence.

“Oh.”

— 

John drinks heavily, phone in hand.  

He looks at the messages, two little boxes, nothing more. But they haven't disappeared yet, they're still real. He types out a dozen different words, continuations of thoughts that have haunted him for years.

He deletes them all. He drinks. The lights flicker and he curses, standing to shut them down in a methodical pattern before returning to his chair, his glass, his phone.  He finishes his drink, reclines and stares at the ceiling, watching car lights as they filter through the curtain to chase the shadows.

Finally, he drifts.

The floor of his flat is black and it sucks at his feet, pulling his shoes free.  He expects for his socks to connect with goo but instead the black crunches and the sound of chitinous bodies swirling and swarming around his ankles grows in volume until it’s all he can hear.  Still, he walks forward knowing he needs to find something.

Bits of black separate from the writhing mass to clamber up his legs, their dark silhouettes giving them away as cockroaches. John continues and can feel bits of roach breaking and lodging in his soles but he ignores it; he just needs to find…

 _Knock, knock, knock_.

John wakes with a start, brushing invisible insects from his skin before remembering what woke him.  He stands, still clothed to check the door, but when he peeks through the security peephole he sees no one there.

—

Days go by and John finds himself in front of 221 Baker Street more times than he can count.  He watches the windows but only sees a whisper of activity.  He has walked up to the door, even lifted the handle to knock but he thinks against it.

He doesn’t want to know.

One night he goes through the ritual, no excuse on his tongue this time and he finally sees him.  Sherlock stands at one of the windows, backlit by the living light of a fire.  John can feel Sherlock’s eyes on him even if he can’t see them, and something hot warms his cheeks and hurries him away.

But it was Sherlock, that much John knows.

—

_Come back -SH_

_No_

—

John didn’t expect it, but there’s a hatred that’s bubbled beneath the bone since Sherlock returned. Or an anger. John can’t parse the two as they seem to feed into his veins in equal measure, congealing the blood into something slow and all consuming.

That’s fine, he can deal with it. The little bits of warmth and relief temper the edge.

He’s in his little flat, alone. Again.  Mary took her things, worried that the black in the crags of his eyes would infect her as well.  “You have a lot to figure out.” She’d said as she took her toothbrush from the bathroom sink.  “I’m not going to be able to help you, you wouldn’t let me if I could.”

She’s always been an incredibly pragmatic woman, emotions and reactions checked and carefully measured before released to the general public.  He’d liked that.  He doesn’t like it now.

He seethes.  There’s whiskey in the cabinet, beer in the fridge and a constant nagging at the back of his head that he’s starting to follow in Harry’s footsteps.

He stands and gathers his coat.  He’ll work, maybe that will help.  

—

_You live alone, Mary took her things.  Why not come back? -SH_

_No_

—

Work scratches against the thin facade John's constructed as a wall between him and the rest of the world.  He can see through the abrasions to the outburst he's so precariously trying to maintain.

He escapes back to his flat and it smells of baked bread and that rankles and jarrs him into a frenzy of smashed objects and ripped papers and shaking hands.  He falls into the plastic hold of his chair and allows himself to weep.

He wants to go home.

—

_That’s not a proper answer -SH_

No reply.

—

John could live in limbo, it would be comfortable there.

But he’s outside 221 again and he can’t deny that one day he’ll give in and return, so why not today?

So John knocks.

“John! What a surprise!”  

John smiles wanly in the face of her stilted enthusiasm, but it warms him to see her after so long.

“Mrs. Hudson, I’ve missed you.”

She softens, and her next words come on the end of a huff. "I have a phone, deary, you should've rung."

John steps forward and embraces her, not having the words to explain his years of silence and not at all wanting to find them.  She ushers him the rest of the way in, closing the door behind them.

"Is he in?"

"Yes, of course.”  She looks up the stairs, face lined with worry.  “Stop by on your way out."

“Certainly.”

The seventeen steps creak in familiar places, chasing up the dust from old memories of rushing up and down on the tails of new cases and adrenaline highs. Stalking down to meet the press, down with his things in one last march away from ghosts and painful memories.  

Up to face the same ghosts brought back.  

Sherlock stares at him wide-eyed as John finally crests the landing, John’s chair obnoxiously tangled in the rug behind him as if tugged there with some force.  John balks.

“What are you doing with my chair?”

“It was blocking my view of the kitchen.” Sherlock's voices dares John to contradict him, to judge him and John can only stare; he can’t think of a better response to such a bizarre display of Sherlock-ness. He tries after a moment.

“You’ve never cared about your view of the kitchen before.”

Sherlock shrugs and John can feel his eyes tearing apart every tell and clue John might have on his person. John barely catches a limp as Sherlock adjusts his position, leaning on the chair. Sherlock winces a bit, and then crosses his arms in something of a defensive motion, back curled minutely. Then he's settled and talking again.

“I’ll put it back if you’re coming home.”  

John feels his chest tighten, not sure what gave him away but positive in that moment that yes, finally, he would be returning home. He asks.

“What gave me away?”  

Sherlock squints, and then his face washes out into smug little curls at the corners of his eyes and lips.

“Everything.”

 _smugbastardhatealwaysrightalwayscomposedalwaysacting._  John smiles.

—

John moves in to the cooing approval of Mrs. Hudson.

"Oh, it'll be so nice to have you both under one roof again."

She almost seems to have forgotten her irritation at John, the sight of him loaded down with his meager possessions an apparent balm for every night he didn't call.

"Well, it's experimental."

"Of course, dear, you two have a lot to figure out." She's not smiling as she says this and John gets the distinct feeling that she is trying to impress upon him something of great importance. He can't fathom what.

"I suppose we do," he says to appease her and she pats his arm in response.

"Oh, John!"  

John turns, foot on the first step.  "Yes?"

"Could you possibly replace the bulbs in the kitchen and over the landing? They've been flickering something awful for awhile."

John wouldn't have noticed it, not at first, but she's right. At the top of the stairs the lights flicker and crackle at odd intervals, then remain unchanged for longer moments. The sound grates on John's nerves now that he's aware.

"John?"

He starts, realizing he must not have responded. Blinking his eyes a few times to focus, he smiles at her reassuringly.

"Yes, right, of course. I'll get on that shortly."

"Thank you, dear.”

—

John tries to start a conversation with Sherlock.  Around tea, he opens his mouth, words on his tongue:

 _How did you do it?_ or _Why did you do it?_ or, and most importantly _Why did you leave me?_

But he doesn’t say any of that. Instead:

“Do you have a case on?”

“No. I’m not allowed at crime scenes.” Sherlock looks up from picking at a piece of toast. He grins and waves a hand at the living area. “Lestrade gave me some cold cases to keep me entertained.”

“So he knows you’re back?”

“Yes, I told him after I saw you.”  Sherlock looks away, picks at his toast again until it’s nothing but crumbs. “He...embraced me.”

Guilt floods the pit of John’s stomach for a long, drawn out moment before curdling into that toxic flood of resentment he’s grown so used to.  His tea flickers and ripples before going placid.

“He missed you.”

“Yes.  I never expected that.”  Sherlock stands and clears his plate, retiring to the living area to work, no doubt, on his cold cases.

John watches him for long moments, eyes narrowed into a glare.  The kitchen light he’s just replaced flickers and his concentration is broken in favor of mild irritation.

—

John finds a book on his bed after a shift at the clinic.  It’s an old thing, cover wrapped in expensive cloth nearly balding around the edges.  Black gilding spells out _Mister Babadook_ on the cover, indented into the cloth and shiny in his room’s dull lighting.  There is no author’s name and when John opens the book, there is no name there either, but it’s obvious the pages have been handcrafted with care.

“A children’s book,” John mutters as he flips it open.  The pages are scrawled with beautiful charcoal lines and thick black ink.  The cover, bright red, edges the open pages and something tugs at the back of John’s brain.  It’s a familiar feeling, black and tarrish and thick in his thoughts.  He shakes it off and picks the book up off his bed, turning so that he can sit on the edge and spread the book out across his knees.

_If it’s in a word or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook._

He turns the page, ignoring the pressure building beneath his chest. There’s a closet on one page; paper doors meant to be opened by the reader flutter as John reads the text on the other page.

_A rumbling sound, then 3 sharp knocks._

_ba-BA-ba DOOK! DOOK! DOOK!_

_That’s when you’ll know that he’s around._

_You’ll see him if you look._

John flips the paper doors open with a finger and finds _ba-BA-ba DOOK! DOOK! DOOK!_ again in sharp white lettering against a black background. It feels like a living thing beneath his fingertips, the paper pulsing and breathing in the oils of his hands as he turns the page.

A figure, tall and black takes up the middle of the next two pages, its shadow extending all the way back to a crooked doorway, its eyes white and startling, its mouth open in a too-wide, toothy smile. A top hat tempers the eerie malevolence.

_This is what he wears on top_

_He’s funny, don’t you think?_

John chuckles, disarmed.  He turns to the next page.

A long, gangly man lies awake in his bed, a window open and moon bright beside his head. John thinks briefly it looks a bit like Sherlock if he let his curls go free of product. The Babadook curves down from the ceiling in dark lines, top hat and smiling face still present.

_See him in your room at night_

_And you won’t sleep a wink_

Beneath the Babadook’s gaping grin, a word bubble demands: “LET ME IN.”

The next page erupts in a large, pitch black beast raised from the pages, teeth painted sharp and white in tense inky strokes, eyes tiny pin pricks in the sea of dark. A crack barely visible at first like the artist had decided against painting it, breaks up the black near what would be the creature’s left shoulder.

_I’ll soon take off my funny disguise_

_(take heed of what you read…)_

_And once you see what’s underneath_

Only text, double printed and ghostly, spreads across the next two pages.

_You’re going to wish you were_

John knows what will come next, tension back full force in his spine and fingers as he turns to the next page to find a single word.

_dead_

He flips through the rest of the pages, but finds them blank.  He goes back to the beginning, tempted to read through it all again.  Deciding against that, he slams it shut and places the book in the bottom drawer of his bedside cabinet.  He doesn’t have time for a children’s book, no matter how grisly or engaging.

_Knock, knock, knock._

John freezes, breath held deep in his lungs and only remembered when his door cracks open, Sherlock peering around the edge.  

“There’s tea downstairs if you’d care for it.”

John exhales, relieved and feeling foolish.  That sludgy feeling filters in as he stretches his lips in an approximation of a smile, nodding.

“Sure.  I’ll be down in a minute.”

— 

John stares at his ceiling, black with shadow.  It shifts into darker shades, never still and blurring the longer he keeps his eyes stretched open.

He can’t sleep.  Somewhere along the baseboards he hears chittering; a shuffle-whisper of tiny legs darting about. He hears the ambient sounds of Sherlock having settled into a rhythm downstairs to match the bugs on his floor—a mad, quiet cacophony of sleepless noises just jarring enough to draw him back into wakefulness again and again and _again_.

The walls close in and he doesn’t move, just continues to stare up at the shrinking square of ceiling. It falls to meet him, boxing him in, making him for one brief moment feel like a giant in his tiny, claustrophobic room and then it all meets together, crushing him.

The shadows are no longer so dark, so complete.  Daylight draws them out long and grey amongst the other, dawn-diluted colors.  John sits up, still hears the chittering-shuffling-whisper around him, but silence rings loud from downstairs.  His back clambers for attention, tightening up to the brink of spasming before John stretches his arms up and arches.

Another day.

—

Another day refusing to acknowledge that not a single thing is okay.

He still feels grief so deep in his chest, it must be permanently rooted there.  It flares every time Sherlock flutters past his peripheral, convincing him he’s seeing a specter until he turns and Sherlock is still there.  Fiddling with a microscope, or the teakettle or watching John in return.

Then the anger slips in and John has to look away because he can’t be angry at a ghost brought back, he can’t rage against a miracle.  That will reverse it all, that will take him back to Bart’s watching the roof and make the body broken on the concrete below real again.  

So John walks down to the kitchen with a smile and pretends.

“How are your cold casing coming along,” he says around a yawn as he busies himself with toast.  Sherlock already has water boiling, but his movements are manic and without sense.  John can barely keep him within his direct line of sight, constantly having to turn his head to keep the tail of a dressing gown or one pale foot within the corner of his eye at any time.

It grates at John’s smile.

“They’re so dull,” Sherlock snarls, angry and stiff beyond his usual tantrum.  “I’ve solved most of them, but the forensic evidence is so shoddy there’s nothing I can do to prove myself.”

John seats himself, rubbing at his temples as Sherlock continues to flit about.  He doesn’t touch anything, hands fluttering over mugs or the refrigerator handle or the opposite chair of John.  John would call it pacing, but it’s such a silent thing that it summons the last nights John spent within 221b, alone and sure that Sherlock haunted every corner.

John starts to doubt the existence of Sherlock, dropping his head to calm the thoughts before looking up again.  Sherlock is gone.

Ice settles against John’s throat and hands and cheeks, a cold-hot wash of anxiety aggravated by the sudden knocking downstairs.  John turns, doesn’t see Sherlock in the living area, doesn’t see him on the landing.

_Knock, knock, knock._

John stands, needing to busy himself before anxiety can morph into panic. His hand shakes as he starts down the stairs.

The pipes around him creak with running water, the rush of the toilet being flushed.  “John, don’t get that!”

John already has his hand on the lock and he needs to place the entirety of his palm against the door to steady himself as relief makes him weak.

“Mrs. Hudson isn’t in,” he calls back and opens the door.

No one there.  John frowns, fighting down the returning anxiety in his stomach before closing the door.

As he begins his ascent, the door nearly rattles off its hinges with force of new knocking.

“ _John!_ ”

John ignores Sherlock and turns on his heel—almost tripping on air as he forgets he already walked up two steps—and yanks the door open with angry words ready on his tongue.

No one.  John steps into the doorway and scans the street, not finding a single suspicious soul. He looks down as he grabs the door handle and finds the red book from his room on the stoop.

John grabs it and slams the door shut forgetting to lock it in his haste to clamber up the stairs.  Sherlock calls to him again but John continues up until he’s locked away in his room, the book spread out across his knees.

He had meant to toss it back in the drawer it came from, but his fingers are flipping through the pages—eyes skimming the illustrations until he reaches where he thought the empty pages lay.

“What the fuck?”  

_I’ll wager with you, I’ll make you a bet._

John runs his fingers over the double print.  Ink spills in messy patterns across the page, spatters as black and rich as moonlit blood.  He turns to the next set of pages, the dark grinning form of the Babadook standing up from the middle crease.  In front of it, in greys and whites, stands a figure with short hair and a jumper, hands pressed to its ears and eyes screwed up.  Its mouth gapes wide around a scream, anger violently present in every sharp and carefully cut line.

_The more you deny, the stronger I get._

John turns, bile burning the back of his throat as the Babadook rises from the page, hands against the figure’s shoulders now.  The figure has its own hands pulled away from its ears, fingers hooked into crude claws and screaming face curled up in a wicked grimace.

 _The BABADOOK growing, right under your skin_.

The final pages have the figure devoid of the Babadook, dark shadows trailing out from around it in angry snaking lines.  In its hooked fingers is the neck of the gangly, curly headed man from the beginning of the book.  He has no eyes, just x’s in their place and the figure seems to move of its own accord until, with the sharp sound of ripped paper, the curly headed man’s head drops to the side.

_Oh Come, come see what’s underneath._

The last pages draw a sharp inhale from John, his stomach turning thickly. The jumpered figure stands alone, gun in hand.  As the pages settle, the hand raises the gun to the paper figure’s temple and black blood slides out from the other side of its skull.  The figure grins up at John, too many teeth crowding the space of its mouth.  

John tears the pages, shaking fingers ripping the paper into uneven squares.  A corner slices into his thumb, staining the growing shreds with blood but he continues until every single page has been destroyed and the cover rests across his lap bereft of its story.

He feels satisfied dumping the mess into his rubbish bin.

A solitary knock shatters the silence that has grown in the moments between John’s destruction and calming pulse.  He opens the door expecting Sherlock to have finally come to confront him.

There is no one there.

The tension building in John’s skin reaches a breaking point, driving him down the stairs and out of the flat to the sounds of a startled Sherlock.  The pub.  That’s where he should go, he wants a drink to drown out the superstitious wailing in his brain.

As he waits for a taxi, a couple out walking their dog passes by.  The animal shies away from John, hackles rising as it walks behind him, lips pulled back in a defensive snarl.  One of the women shushes it, while the other apologizes to John.  “He’s never like this, he’s normally so calm.”

They leave with the dog still growling as they tug it away.  It unsettles John deeply and his desire for a whiskey becomes a deep-seated need.

—

The book glares red from the kitchen table when John returns home.  Sherlock has his hand on it, face unreadable as he flips open the pages.  John freezes, limbs stiffened with a deep possessive anger that he can’t justify.  Fear skates around the edges, mostly quieted by the drink still heavy on his tongue.

“You were in my room.”

Sherlock glances up at him, brow furrowed.  “What?”

“You took that from my room.”  John points at the book and its pages of inky, shaky illustrations.

“No, I didn’t.”  

John feels anger thrum low.

“You did!” John slams his hands against the table, shaking it hard enough to jitter and dislodge cups and crumbs briefly from the surface. Sherlock flinches back, eyes wide; it’s childish and spiteful but John takes pleasure in that.  “That book was in my rubbish bin.”

“I never went into your room, John.”

 _liarliarliar._ John reaches for the book and tugs, pulling it out from the tent of Sherlock’s fingers and into his own hand.  “I don’t believe you.”

Sherlock opens his mouth as if to speak and then stops, shaking his head.  About them the kitchen light wavers and a high pitched buzz fills the air.  John pays it no mind as he examines the pages, stomach coiling into a hideous knot.  They had been pieced back together, carefully arranged and lovingly reattached to the binding.

“You put it together?”  

“John, I don’t—”

“NO!”  John roars and the lights sputter out with a loud pop.  Sherlock towers up, trying to use his height over John to his advantage and it makes John seethe.

“What are you denying?”  His arrogant, confident voice rumbles from between his lips.  

“You, you pompous git, _you._ ”  John sneers at him, unsure of where the words come from, but so completely confident in their validity.  He swings his arms out wide, puffing up his chest to counteract Sherlock’s height with his own strength.  The book sits between them forgotten as long thought words flood out of John.  “I’m denying you—you aren’t real!”

“Me?”  The shock in Sherlock’s alien features satisfies a wicked impulse in John. “Of course I’m real!”

"You can't be, you jumped—I saw your body!"  John grabs at his hair, tugging it in sheer frustrated rage.  Sherlock steps back and his illusion of control breaks as he cowers away.

“You let it in.”

“The fuck are you on about?”  John stops his tugging, ignoring the familiar ring of Sherlock’s words, denying their source.  His eyes dart to the book and then back to Sherlock.

“You let it in.”

It infuriates John, the repetition.  “ _Sherlock, I swear to god—_ ”

“You’re not John.”

John sees black and his mouth opens around strong enough words to truly frighten Sherlock.  He surges forward, overcome with the need to crush that throat and end the words tumbling from it.  Sherlock bolts, long legs carrying him to his room before John can fully clear the table. Sherlock’s door latches shut as John slams into it, feet slipping against the wooden floor.

“Let me in!”  John demands as he bangs on Sherlock’s door, knuckles stinging with each sharp rap.   “ _Sherlock_.”

Without a response, John stops. He can’t see straight.  When he pulls his fist back, he’s surprised to see the skin has cracked and peeled back from raw wounds.  Blood starts to spot and surface, oozing barely as he drops his hands to his sides. He rests his head against the door.

“It’s me, Sherlock. It’s John.”  

John doesn’t know why he says it, of course Sherlock knows he’s John.

“Come on, Sherlock, let me in,” John pleads after another beat of silence.  “Let’s talk.”

Sherlock’s response, though muffled, strikes something black in John’s stomach. “You’re not John.”

John roars, anger coating every bit of thought John has to himself, drowning him down as he beats and beats and beats against the door.  It shakes and quivers with the force of his blows, barely holding in place as John throws the weight of his body against it, shoulder hitting first.

“Let me in!”

He rushes the door again, sees nothing but red and black as it refuses to give.

“Let me in!”

Again. The door jolts and the wood around the hinges splinter.

“Let me in!”

With a loud crack and crash the door slams open on Sherlock’s room, the shadows dark and hazy around John as he stumbles in.

“Let’s talk, Sherlock.  That’s all I want to do.”  John turns his head left and right in wide, lolling motions, wide eyes scanning for movement.  Finally, he lands on Sherlock, pale skin nearly glowing once John focuses.  Pretty skin, fragile skin.   

“You’re not John.”

Shifting, unfocused shapes cloud John’s vision as steps further into the room.  His mouth opens wide around the words, “Of course I’m John.”

“John, if you can hear me, I’m sorry.”

“I. Am. John!” John lunges, fingers outstretched and hooked in points aimed for the bright expanse of Sherlock’s throat.  Pain, bright and sharp, follows a spark of silver and slices across John’s left hand. He howls and the same pain, but deeper and full and splitting, erupts from his thigh.  John collapses to his knees still screaming, barely hearing the chanted _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry_ from Sherlock as John’s pushed to the floor, creating new and concentrated agony.

“I’ll always love you, John, please come back.”

John snarls and desperately tries to right himself, but Sherlock has overpowered him, sheet in hand to try and trap John.  He barely manages to get one wrist before John bucks and knocks Sherlock off balance, surging up to finally, _finally_ wrap his fingers around that thin, sinewy neck.

John squeezes and Sherlock struggles, bring his hands up to frame John’s face with long fingers.

“You can’t get rid of it, John.” He strokes his thumbs across John’s cheeks and something breaks in John.   “You can’t get rid of the Babadook”

John’s fingers loosen and Sherlock gulps in air but doesn’t move except to continue his stroking.  “I love you, John. I’m sorry.”

John fully lets go and rolls as the sudden urge to vomit upheaves his stomach; inky black and vile liquid spills across the floor, gleaming in what dull light travels from the living area.  His thigh and hand scream as his back curls around his purging.  His vision slowly clears and he’s able to see more and more details of the room around him: wood splinters scattered everywhere, blood splattered and dripped in violent arcs, Sherlock’s throat red and bruised.  His stomach turns again, releasing the last of the tarrish bile.

“Sherlock,” he croaks.  “Oh god, I—”

“John, it’s okay.” Sherlock struggles to stand and he bends to pull John from the floor in frantic motions.  “John we have to move, can you stand?”

It’s then that John notices that the shadows further into Sherlock’s room are moving, swarming and billowing out in angry waves around the sharp lines of a materializing figure.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”  John struggles but finally stands, hobbling out of the room with Sherlock’s aid.

They make it to the living space, leaned against each other and wrapped in the light of the fire when the shadows catch up to them. The fire sputters and dies against the rush of wind, the air repugnant and heavy with the same smell of John’s bile. They return to darkness.

John expects the figure from the book, tall and ugly with its toothy snarl and tiny, malevolent eyes.

Sherlock inhales sharply, breath hissing in between clenched teeth as John nearly collapses, knees weak.

Sherlock stands before them, one side of his face red and crushed in, matted hair messy around the gore.  The other side crinkles around a grin, perfect except for the stripes of blood painted there.

“I don’t need you.”  Its voice rumbles in a near approximation of Sherlock’s except for an underlying echo as if two voices speak through one mouth.  “I never needed you.”

“No,” John whispers, throat raw as he tries to speak. Sherlock’s supporting arm clenches tightly around John and he leans into it.  “No.”

The room melts away and John stares up at the roof of Bart’s now, cloudy sky grey and menacing.  He stands alone, watching Sherlock step out to the edge, even as the Sherlock from his living room continues to speak.

“I jumped that day to be rid of you.  You held me back.”

John shakes his head violently. In the back of his head he hears the words that played on repeat for months after Sherlock’s death: _This phone call – it’s, er ... it’s my note. It’s what people do, don’t they – leave a note?_

“Dying set me free of you.”

_Goodbye, John_

“NO!”  The illusion cracks and shatters around the force of his denial and the ghostly Sherlock startles back, face flickering.  “YOU’RE WRONG!”

“You are worthless. You hold me back.”

John snarls and steps away from Sherlock, ignoring the pain in his leg to limp forward.  “ _You have no place here_!”

Its face melts away, replaced by the visage John expected except white teeth are yellow and pointed and gleaming with saliva and the eyes don’t shine at all, flat and dead around the hatred inside of it.  It towers up, arms outstretched and batlike as it screeches.  John covers his ears, smearing blood across one side of his face but he steps forward again.  “YOU WILL NOT CONTROL ME!”

The Babadook flinches, rearing away before swarming forward with a shriek, knocking both John and Sherlock off their feet as it retreats down the stairs. John struggles back to his feet; adrenaline numbs the pain as he rushes after it, screaming.

He hears a slam, the door to 221C still rattling on its hinges as John rounds the corner.  It won’t budge when John grabs the handle, stuck shut against him.  He drops his head against it, barely able to stand as his leg throbs, blood flowing freely from the knife wound.

“John?”

John turns as Sherlock approaches him, his hand outstretched uncertainly.  John reaches for it, grabs Sherlock’s bony wrist and pulls him into a tight, desperate embrace.  John’s shaking, fingers gripped so tightly in Sherlock’s shirt that he can feel the fabric tear.  Sherlock holds him with equal desperation and they stand like that, silent and bleeding.

— 

“Are you almost done?”  John asks, peeking in the kitchen to check on Sherlock.

“Almost.  There are eyeballs in the fridge, take those.”

“Yeah, right.”  John goes to the refrigerator, finding a bowl of eyeballs by the milk.  “You could have covered these.”

“Why? I knew you’d take them as soon as you got home.”  Sherlock finally looks up from his experiment, extending a hand expectantly.  John smiles at him and crosses the space between them before linking his hand in Sherlock’s, kissing the square tips of each of Sherlock’s finger before bending in to place another kiss in Sherlock’s curls.  The cold of the refrigerator washes over them, reminding John to grab the bowl when he pulls back.

“I’ll be back in just a moment, would you start tea?”

Sherlock nods but his mouth quirks apprehensively.

“I’ll be fine.”  John kicks the stainless steel door shut, both hands gripping the bowl to keep from sloshing its contents.

“I know.”

“Good.”  

John unlocks the door to 221C and descends into the mildewed room, the smell coating the inside of his nose as it always does.  Every corner is bathed in shadow, growing darker the deeper into the room John walks.  He sets the bowl down and waits.

It hisses, a low sound that grows into a shriek.  John stands his ground even as the force of it bends him back, trying to overcome him.

“It’s okay.  You’re okay.”  John whispers, voice pitched to comfort.  “Hush now.”

The pressure on John lessens, allowing him to stand even as it growls and chitters in the dark.  John shushes it gently until it calms.  Finally the bowl scrapes back across the floor, swallowed by the shadows and John retreats, locking the door behind him.

“How was it?” Sherlock asks when John returns.  He has tea set up at the table, his experiment pushed to the side to allow them somewhere to sit.

“Quiet.”  John takes his seat, sipping at his milky tea with a contented sigh.

“It’s gotten much better, hasn’t it?”  Sherlock pulls a chair next to John, close enough that when he sits, his thigh and calf press in a comforting line against John’s.

“Yes, I think it has,”  he says, leaning into Sherlock, content.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Tumblr](http://catie-brie.tumblr.com/) where I would love to answer questions, comments, chats or just have you as a friendly stalker. It's also where I periodically post about fanfic I am working on.
> 
> Kudos and comments, as always, are greatly appreciated.


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